“Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink” (Jo. 7: 37-38).
By my calculation, this is the twenty-eighth day of Lent: twenty-eight days into it, with twelve more to go. Christians figure the season as forty days of fasting, following the example of Jesus in the wilderness. Sunday is never a fast day, which means we leave out the five Sundays in Lent, as well as Palm Sunday. Notice that they are “Sundays in Lent” not “of Lent.” That’s why Lent begins on a Wednesday, if you’ve ever wondered, as the Church tacks on a few days at the start in order to make up the difference.
As I said, Sunday is never a fast day, you’ll be glad to hear; even in Lent, it is a celebration of the Lord’s resurrection. The Sundays in Lent have a subdued quality to them, but they are never fasting days. If you’ve taken on a discipline of fasting and abstinence, and I hope you have, Sunday is an oasis in the desert. It’s a little reminder of the great Easter feast that lies ahead. When Jesus’ disciples came to him and asked why John the Baptist’s disciples fasted but they did not, Jesus said “The wedding guests cannot fast while the bridegroom is with them, can they?” (Mk. 2:19). Sunday is the day, you might say, when Christ the bridegroom is with us; as Jesus then says, “The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away… and then they will fast” (Mk. 2:20).
All this is by way of saying that we are in the home stretch of Lent, more than two thirds of the way to Easter, and that at this point our focus begins to change. There’s no doubt from our reading today, with its emphasis on the gathering conspiracy against Jesus, that the shadow of the cross begins to dominate the last weeks of Lent. “Some of them wanted to arrest him, but no one laid hands on him” (Jo. 7:44).
But there’s more to be said here, because we ought to be casting our eyes even further ahead. Just as every Sunday is a little Easter, even the Sundays in Lent, so we too need to remember that the season is oriented to Easter. With the start of Lent we take on a regimen of prayer and fasting, penitence and good works; we embark upon the practices that make for a holy Lent. God willing, we’ve cleared out the spiritual attic and created some space within us. Now, we begin to look ahead, yearning for the new thing that God will do in our lives.
“Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink” (Jo. 7: 37-38). Jesus’ words in our Gospel speak of spiritual thirst. He’s come up to Jerusalem for the harvest festival, which also commemorated Israel’s wilderness sojourn after the exodus from Egypt. This was the time when people in Palestine began to look for the rainy season to start, so that the seed for next year’s crop could be safely planted.
In Jesus’ day, mindful of their dependence on rain, the community celebrated the festival with what we might call a water feature: a daily procession from the temple to the pool of Siloam, bringing back water for pouring out on the altar. The congregation sang, “You will bring water with rejoicing from the springs of salvation” (Is. 12:3): a line from the prophet Isaiah, perhaps meant to remind God to go ahead and send the rain. Jesus sent the man born blind to wash at the pool of Siloam, making the point that he was, after all, in charge of the whole process of life, from its creation to its renewal.
Shortly before encountering the man born blind, Jesus spoke of thirsting, and of drinking deeply from the source. In our Gospel, he quotes the Scripture, “Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water” (Jo. 7:38). The Gospel writer offers this comment, “Now he said this about the Spirit, which believers in him were to receive” (Jo. 7:39). As Jesus says, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink” (Jo. 7: 37-38). Jesus himself is the source of the Spirit, of the water that comes from the springs of salvation.
Now in Lent is the time for us to yearn for the living water. At the harvest festival, in ancient times, everyone was mindful of God’s power to refresh the land through the gift of water, and their need for God to act. Now in Lent, we’re conscious of our thirst for God’s power and presence in our lives, through the gift of the Holy Spirit. We’re in need of God’s refreshing Spirit, and our yearning for renewal this Lent drives us forward to Easter, and the celebration of new life.
St. Augustine once said in a sermon, “It is yearning that makes the heart deep” (Tract. 40:13). As we move into the home stretch, let your yearning run wild for the new life that God longs to give you. Let your thirst increase, and drink deeply of the Holy Spirit. Jesus is the source of the life that is within us, through his death and resurrection. May God make your heart deep, so that through your yearning you may receive this great gift.